What she’d said still stood, though. True wasn’t meant for a relationship. Maybe she’d never see him after tonight, but at least it wouldn’t be goodbye just yet. She could draw it out a little bit longer; she could delay the inevitable until she felt ready to walk away.
True smiled up at him even as she felt tears pricking at her eyes. “You don’t know Onny’s house like I do. Plus, I feel responsible. Come on.”
After a beat of hesitation, Orion nodded.
True began to lift Wicked Wynona up again, but Orion beat her to it. In complete silence, he followed her down from the balcony, carrying the heavy mannequin easily in his strong arms.
It took a few moments for True to remember where the guest bathroom with the medical supplies was, but then the giant grandfather clock jogged her memory. “Ah, here’s that vintage 1910 Stromwell Mr. Diamante loves so much.” She paused, studying the clockface, her own face reflected in it. “Whoa. It’s almost midnight.” She glanced at Orion, feeling a pang of sadness. She remembered how, at the beginning of the night, she’d been desperate to get away from him. And now she’d do anything to wind back the clock, figuratively speaking, just to prolong their time together. “Ten minutes to go.”
“The magical hour on a magical night,” Orion replied, without much enthusiasm. The bloodstains on his shirt were drying to a muddy brown, but his forehead was still trickling. And Wicked Wynona probably wasn’t getting any lighter.
“Right.” Pushing her emotions aside, True bustled forward, two doors past the clock on their right. “Here’s the bathroom.”
Even for a guest bathroom, it was bigger than any True had ever used on a regular basis. The floor was a pale white stone threaded with gold, and there was a huge garden tub on one end. The counter and sink were shimmery pale with veins of gold shot through. The decor gave the impression of being suspended in a cloud. In fact, if heaven were a bathroom, True was pretty sure this would be it.Okay, focus, True.
Closing the door behind Orion, who set Wicked Wynona down in a corner, she began to rummage around in the cabinets under the sink. Sure enough, there was a box with a red medical cross on it.
True hauled it out and opened it on the counter with a satisfiedgrunt. “Have a seat.…” Looking around, her eyes lit on a beige tufted stool in the corner. “There.”
Orion dragged the stool over, careful not to get any blood on it, and sat dutifully. “You know,” he said, mildly, “what happened on that balcony, that was pretty nuts. You took on four football players and won.”
They looked at each other.
“Uh-huh,” True said finally, turning her attention back to the first aid kit.
“And you seemed to be talking to someone at one point. Who was that?”
True continued looking down at the kit, her face hot. “Dunno. Must’ve been the adrenaline.”
“Of course. The adrenaline.”
She darted a sideways glance at Orion, who was looking right at her, his gaze assessing. He was no fool, this boy.
Desperate to change the subject, True handed over a thick wad of gauze. “Here. Hold this over the cut and just sit there.”
Orion did as he was told, but his characteristic mirth and openness were gone. He still looked hurt, distant. True knew it wasn’t his bloody forehead. She’d built a wall between them he couldn’t cross.
Truthfully, she didn’t really need to be in here with him while he held the gauze over his wound. All he needed to do was apply steady pressure for ten minutes or so, put some antibiotic ointment on, bandage it, and be on his way. She should get Wicked Wynona back to Mr. Brightside before he decided Truehad absconded into the night with his witch and made a dark effigy of her out of deer gizzards or something.
True eyed Orion as if to memorize him, those big hands, those wide shoulders—and then noticed again his bloodied shirt. Yessss! “Hey, they have some hydrogen peroxide in here,” she said breezily, pointing at the first aid kit. “That’s a good way to get bloodstains out of clothes. If you give me your shirt, I can get it soaking.”
Orion looked a little taken aback at this domestic overture. “Oh, you don’t have to do that. I can take care of it when I get home.”
“Are you kidding? This is fun for me.” Smiling, True turned the brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide over in her hands, trying to be all casual. “It’s like chemistry in real life.” Her smile fell off her face with a splat.Chemistry in real life.If only the figure could save her from herself.
But Orion didn’t seem to notice her lack of social skills, likely because she’d been displaying them all night. Shrugging, he set the gauze down for a moment and then slipped easily out of his shirt.
Holy hell. Even as she took the shirt from him, True’s gaze remained on his abs. It was kind of hardnotto notice them, considering that they were right there in front of her face (well, notliterallyin front of her face, although that would be… pleasant—very pleasant). His skin had a golden tint to it, as if he spent a lot of time outside in the sun, even this time of year. Her eyes traveled upward, to his smooth chest—and then stopped short.
Orion had no hair on his sculpted chest. Instead, right in the middle, on his breastbone, was a tattoo.
His shirt fell from True’s hands to the bathroom floor, but she left it there. Her eyes were riveted on that tattoo. “It’s a moon,” she half-whispered, mostly to herself.
“Hmm?” Still sitting on the stool, Orion glanced down at his chest. “Oh, the tattoo. Yeah, I got it for my eighteenth birthday last month. The plan was originally to get a dragon, but at the last minute…” He shook his head, tossing the gauze into the trash can as he did. His cut had stopped bleeding. “I don’t know, I just had this vision of a full moon in the night sky and changed my mind on a whim. It could’ve been a disaster, but I actually really like it.” He shrugged and then noticed her expression. “What?”
For a moment, True couldn’t speak. Onny’s prediction kept echoing through her mind:Your soul mate carries the moon on his chest.At the time, True had laughed it off as Onny being Onny. What did that even mean, “carries the moon on his chest”? It was preposterous and ridiculous; it was actually, literally coming to pass right before True’s astonished eyes.
Had she been completely wrong about love? Was it possible that, in this instance, some unknown outside force had brought True and Orion together? She thought about the woman in the old-fashioned wedding dress, shaking her head when True refused to admit her feelings for Orion on the balcony. The planchette practically skewering her when answering the question about who would be the next to be kissed. Onny’s prediction and Ash’s assurances. Orion dancing into her life, irrepressibly accepting of every aspect of her, in direct contrast to Bradley. As if he werean answer to a question she’d sent out into the universe, without even thinking about it.
